What Is Grace and What Does It Mean in the Bible?
You have probably heard the word grace before, maybe in church or in an old hymn. But many people have heard about grace without ever knowing what it really means. Some, even faithful church members, think that if you believe in Jesus and you are a good person, God will accept you. It sounds right, but it misses the heart of the Christian faith.
So what is grace? Here it is in simple terms. Grace is God's free gift of love and forgiveness in your life. It is everything God gives you when you don't deserve it. You cannot earn grace. You can only receive it.
The gospel of grace is the central theme of the Bible. I preached a whole message on why grace is the greatest gift you could ever receive, from the first chapter of Philippians.
In the Bible, grace is a gift you could never earn
Think about it like this. If you work an hourly job and put in zero hours, you get paid nothing. If you work eight hours, you get paid for eight hours. You earned that paycheck. A birthday present is different. Nobody asks how many hours you worked before they hand you a gift. You simply receive it.
The Bible puts it this way: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23, NIV). Notice the two words, wages and gift. Wages are what you earn, and what our sin has earned is death. Eternal life can only come to you as a gift.
That is why Paul says "it is by grace you have been saved, through faith" and "not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV). Grace is often called God's unmerited favor, and that is a good definition. Unmerited simply means you did not earn it. Grace means God does not treat you according to your sins, but according to His love.
Why can't anyone earn it? Imagine standing on a California beach and being told to swim to Hawaii. Some people would not last five seconds. A strong swimmer might make it five miles. Some of us would get farther than others, but nobody would make it all the way. That is our situation before God, because "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23, NIV).
You cannot work your way to God. The good news is that God worked His way to you! Jesus left heaven, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross to pay for your sins. Then He rose again three days later. When you place your faith in Him, you receive His grace as a free gift. If you are afraid your past is too much for grace, read why God can forgive you after everything you've done.
Here is the best part. You can never do anything to make Him stop loving you, because you never did anything to make Him start loving you.
The grace that saves you keeps changing you
It is easy to think grace is how the Christian life starts, and that after that it is up to you to become a good person. However, grace is not just how your faith starts. It is how your faith keeps going. The same grace that saves you is the grace that strengthens you.
You will never graduate from grace. Grace is not the ABCs of the Christian life. It is the whole alphabet. You need grace when you get out of bed, when you go to work, and when you deal with your family. The strength you need to say no to temptation comes by grace too.
Paul wrote, "For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age" (Titus 2:11-12, NIV). Notice what grace does here. It teaches us. God's grace is the very fuel that makes you more like Jesus.
Maybe you have thought, "I don't know if I could keep this up for the rest of my life." You're right. You can't. But here is the good news: you don't have to!
Picture yourself at the bottom of a pit you dug with your own sin, with both of your legs broken. God reaches in and pulls you out. But He does not set you down and say, "Now walk to the hospital by yourself." He carries you there, He heals you, and at the end of your life He brings you home. God finishes what He starts.
So how do you grow? Not by clenching your fists and gritting your teeth. You grow by resting in and receiving God's love for you. The more you know His love, the more loving you will become. "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19, NIV). That is what it looks like to keep in step with the Spirit instead of religious striving.
Grace is not permission to keep sinning
You might ask, "If God's grace covers all my sin, why not just keep doing whatever I want?" Paul saw that question coming, and his answer was clear: "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!" (Romans 6:1-2, NIV).
God's forgiveness is not a get-out-of-jail-free card that lets you go right back to the very things that got you locked up. Rather, His forgiveness is the fuel that helps you get free from the sin you keep falling into.
You can see this in the way Jesus treated a woman who was caught in adultery. The religious leaders brought her in front of a crowd and said the law commanded them to stone her. After Jesus challenged them, they walked away one by one. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin" (John 8:11, NIV).
Notice the order. Jesus did not make her leave her sin first so that He would stop condemning her. He took away her condemnation first, and then He called her to a new life. True transformation happens after being touched by Jesus.
So if someone uses grace as an excuse to live however they want, something is wrong. Either they do not understand grace yet, or they have never truly received it. We are not saved by good works, but we are saved to do good works.
That does not mean you will be perfect. You will still fall short, and that is exactly why you need grace. But the deeper the roots of your faith grow, the more fruit of obedience you will see. You are not saved by how much you have changed. But when you are saved, you will change.
How to live from grace this week
Knowing about grace and knowing the God of grace are two different things. It is one thing to know a lot of facts about a famous person. It is another thing to actually know them. Growing in what you know about grace takes time, and it takes being intentional with that time, just like any close relationship.
When you place your faith in Jesus, Paul says you gain access "into this grace in which we now stand" (Romans 5:2, NIV). You do not step into grace once and then move on. You get to stand in it every single day, even if you have followed Jesus for years.
Standing in grace also frees you from needing everyone else's approval. The more you experience the acceptance that comes from the gospel of grace, the less you will feed your addiction to the acceptance of people.
So let me ask you a question. Have you received this gift of grace? You do not have to earn it, but you do have to receive it. Imagine I handed you a birthday card with a check for $100,000 inside, and you threw it away without opening it. The gift would be real, but the money would never reach your account. Today, you can open the gift. If you are ready, place your faith in Jesus and receive His grace right now. If you are not sure how, read how to become a Christian and accept Jesus.
Daily Practice: Each morning this week, read a few verses from Philippians 1:1-11, the passage from the message above. Then pray something like this: "Jesus, thank You that You are a God of grace. Today, I open the door of my heart to Your grace."